"Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free (as long as they have a college degree)."

The Heritage Foundation's rewrite of Emma Lazarus - as expressed earlier this week in a deeply flawed report on the prohibitive costs of immigration reform - not only doesn't scan; it also contradicts what we know about the benefits of immigration.

Even Senate conservatives acknowledge that the Heritage report is a naked political document, just the sort of product most predicted when former South Carolina Sen. Jim DeMint took over the conservative think tank a few weeks ago. With the Senate in the midst of complicated, controversial immigration-reform hearings, we urge lawmakers to keep the focus on solving the problem, not look for excuses to jettison an urgently needed reform of our immigration laws.

The Heritage paper claims that the undocumented immigrants in this country cost the government $1 trillion. Legalizing those immigrants as proposed by legislation now being weighed in the Senate would increase that cost to $6.3 trillion, the report contends. The report also recommends greatly reducing "low-skilled" immigration and increasing numbers for those with high levels of education and skills.

The report was exposed as dubious and unfounded even before a Washington Post reporter found this week that one of its co-authors, Jason Richwine, argued in his 2009 Harvard doctoral dissertation that Hispanics have lower IQs than whites and will continue to have low-IQ children and grandchildren. (Richwine resigned from the Heritage Foundation on Friday.)

A Heritage report helped scuttle a 2007 effort to reform the nation's immigration laws. This time, conservative Republicans were among those quick to repudiate the new effort for its flawed methodology and faulty assumptions.

"They are the only group that's looked at this issue and reached the conclusion they've reached," U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., a member of the "Gang of Eight" senators that crafted reform legislation. "Everybody else who has analyzed immigration reform understands that if you do it, and we do it right, it will be a net positive for our economy."

The Heritage report is a relatively easy sidestep. A bit more difficult are some 300 amendments, two-thirds of them by Republicans and most of them designed to function as improvised explosive devices. Many of these amendment IEDs are being offered by such ardent opponents of the legislation as the Lone Star State's Senate duo, tea-party true-believer Ted Cruz and his senior colleague John Cornyn, a tea-party target in 2014 if he doesn't toe the line.

Despite protestations to the contrary, Cruz, Cornyn and other hard-liners would be happy to hobble immigration reform. That's why they have latched on to the border-security issue as a way to kill it.

Fortunately, reform supporters seem willing to call their bluff. Current legislation would provide an additional $5 billion for security - this on top of huge expenditures in recent years for fencing, equipment and additional agents - and a requirement that Border Patrol agents successfully stop 90 percent of the people trying to cross illegally. It's a high bar, but experts think it's achievable.

Although Texas freshman Cruz has gotten his way more often than not during his brief Senate tenure, this time he and his hard-line cohorts may be on the wrong side of history. A Republican Party anxious about dramatically diminished support among Hispanics, business interests well aware that the current system is untenable and Americans of all political stripes who want an immigration system that reflects reality, not to mention fundamental notions of fairness - all together they may summon the strength to overcome the naysayers.